Contributing Writers

On Monday, we spoke to writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd, whose family is facing forceful eviction from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. He also spoke on CNN and MSNBC. After these interviews, Israeli forces arrested him and forcibly removed him from Sheikh Jarrah. It was captured in a dramatic video shared widely on social media. “They just threw me in the street and told me that I couldn’t come back into the neighborhood,” El-Kurd says.

The death toll in Gaza has reached at least 83, including 17 children, and hundreds of people have been injured, as Israel’s aerial bombardment of the besieged territory continues. Israel is now sending troops to the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion as many Palestinians are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

This week marks the 36th anniversary of the day the city of Philadelphia bombed its own citizens. On May 13, 1985, police surrounded the home of MOVE, a radical Black liberation organization that was defying orders to vacate. Police flooded the home with water, filled the house with tear gas, and blasted the house with automatic weapons, all failing to dislodge the residents. Finally, police dropped a bomb on the house from a helicopter, killing 11 people, including five children.

As Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner attempts to overhaul the city’s criminal justice system, he faces a Democratic primary election next week against Carlos Vega, a former homicide prosecutor who is one of three dozen veteran prosecutors fired by Krasner when he took office in 2018.

In Pennsylvania, more than half of incarcerated people are jailed due to probation violations. We speak with formerly incarcerated activist LaTonya Myers, who says probation and parole, rather than being a stepping stone to freedom, act as a “streamline to mass incarceration,” with punitive rules landing people back behind bars for minor violations.

Four years ago, the longtime civil rights attorney Larry Krasner shocked the political establishment in Philadelphia by being elected district attorney. Now he faces a tough reelection next week. We delve into his record as captured in a new eight-part series by PBS “Independent Lens” that follows how Krasner, who had sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times during his career, ran on a platform of ending mass incarceration and has fought to overhaul the DA’s Office.

Extreme voting restrictions have advanced in several Republican-led states across the U.S., including in Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a sweeping voter suppression bill that will make it harder to vote by mail, limit ballot drop boxes, impose new voter ID requirements and criminalize giving food and water to voters waiting in line at polling places.

At least 85 people, mostly young girls, were killed in Afghanistan after several bomb blasts outside a school in the capital Kabul. Survivors said the bombs were timed to go off as the girls left school for the day. The neighborhood where the attack occurred is mostly populated by the minority Hazara Shia community, and the Afghan government blamed the Taliban, though the group denies responsibility. The massacre came one week after U.S.

This week marks the 36th anniversary of the day the city of Philadelphia bombed its own citizens. On May 13, 1985, police surrounded the home of MOVE, a radical Black liberation organization that was defying orders to vacate. Police flooded the home with water, filled the house with tear gas, and blasted the house with automatic weapons, all failing to dislodge the residents. Finally, police dropped a bomb on the house from a helicopter, killing 11 people, including five children.

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed at least 26 Palestinians, including nine children, as tension in the region has escalated sharply. Hundreds were also injured by Israeli forces Monday when they stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Hamas responded by firing hundreds of rockets into Israel, which reportedly caused dozens of injuries but no deaths.

Nearly 80 years ago, Richard Wright became one of the most famous Black writers in the United States with the publication of “Native Son,” a novel whose searing critique of systemic racism made it a best-seller and inspired a generation of Black writers.

Extreme voting restrictions have advanced in several Republican-led states across the U.S., including in Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a sweeping voter suppression bill that will make it harder to vote by mail, limit ballot drop boxes, impose new voter ID requirements and criminalize giving food and water to voters waiting in line at polling places.

At least 85 people, mostly young girls, were killed in Afghanistan after several bomb blasts outside a school in the capital Kabul. Survivors said the bombs were timed to go off as the girls left school for the day. The neighborhood where the attack occurred is mostly populated by the minority Hazara Shia community, and the Afghan government blamed the Taliban, though the group denies responsibility. The massacre came one week after U.S.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been wounded after Israeli forces raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the second time in four days, with reports showing police fired rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at Palestinian worshipers. Palestinians have been staging weeks of protests to block Israel from evicting dozens of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem to give their homes to Jewish settlers, which the United Nations has described as a possible war crime.